Opinion: Halting UK arms sales to Israel would be more than symbolic - and it is right
Iran’s response to Israel’s attack on its consulate in Damascus has prompted talk of the Middle East being "on the brink".
The fevered policy and media discussions about what happens next risk pushing Gaza out of the frame, yet Palestinians have already been pushed over the brink by Israel’s genocidal assault since October and the question of the UK’s role remains live.
Earlier this month, I had the rather surreal experience of appearing on the BBC's Newsnight programme to discuss UK arms exports to Israel amid growing calls for an arms embargo.
Invited to be the "presenter’s friend", I appeared alongside Lord Kim Darroch, former UK ambassador to the US, and Bob Seely, Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight.
Darroch made the case for it being time to move beyond rhetoric to action and to stop supplying arms to Israel, given its reckless military strategy and the level of civilian harm in Gaza. Seely dismissed this as shallow gesture politics given what he called the "meaninglessly small" level of UK arms exports to Israel, calling instead for the UK to "double down on our relationship with Israel".
Why is an arms embargo on the table at this point? The killing of three white British men, former military personnel working as security providers for aid agencies, by Israel in its air strikes on World Central Kitchen vehicles was the prompt, followed by the publication of a letter by over 600 retired judges, lawyers and legal academics telling the government that it was obliged under international law to suspend the provision of weapons and weapons systems to the government of Israel.
Yet more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since October - and that is just the number of casualties that can be counted.
Their deaths at the hands of the Israeli state have not generated such a demand for action. Yet the UK’s rules are clear: the government will not allow arms exports where there is a clear risk they might be used in a serious violation of international humanitarian law. Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s platitudes aside, the UK government should already have halted arms sales under the terms of its own law and policy.
Read more: Halting UK arms sales to Israel would be more than symbolic - and it is right - Opinion by Anna Stavriankis
